Max and The Leukemia Inquisition

Dec 31. 2008
It's a beautiful day in San Miguel De Allende Mexico. The sun is shining. Hyper people are milling about the amazing house. Coffee is brewing....and then....through the windows of technology...an email arrives.
"Everyone is OK, but you need to call home right away"
Call it Mother's intuition but, something inside of me knew before I ever even called home that life was about to change in a very big way.
Little Max has been experiencing back pain for 6 or 7 weeks now. For whatever reason every doctor that has seen him has had an aversion to giving him an M.R.I. Thank God for his father's insistence. On this night in the E.R......Jeff just would not take no for an answer. The M.R.I. revealed a mass to the right of his spine. I have no words to describe what it feels like to be so estranged and alienated from your child in an emergency. After hours of impossible travel options....I found a ride home and arrived in austin at 4 something in the morning.
I rushed up to the hospital in time to climb into Max's bed and hold him for a bit before he went to the O.R. for a Bone and Bone Marrow Biopsy. He handled the anesthesia with flying colors. Later that afternoon Dr. Shaefer pulled us into a tiny room that seemed to grow smaller by the second. "Max has Leukemia". You could have blown me over with a feather. Nothing I have experienced in my life compares to the emotional railing of that moment. Hands are numb. Heart is pounding. Body is shaking. Breath is short. Tears are filling the entire room. I find the words "So....do we start treating this now? Or-" The Doctor simply says " We treat this now....or Max will die within 2 months". I may have actually fallen out of my chair. Looking across the table into the only other eyes in the world who can truly understand the gravity of this... I searched for some kind of reassurance, but in that moment, I only saw what it physically looks like when a heart breaks. Jeff, too, had been crushed. We are still educating ourselves and Max on Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. There is alot of information to take in. Max has been handling all of the news with such a brave heart. In a matter of seconds his entire childhood got rewritten....and the only thing upsetting him is the boredom and and homesick feeling of being marooned in the hospital. Bless his sweet little heart.
Max spiked a fever about an hour later and was put on I.V. antibiotics. He was given platelets and then morphine for pain . Max had his first blood transfusion the next morning and was promptly whisked away to the O.R. They placed a central line in his chest and gave him his first Intrathecal injection of chemo therapy. He received his second transfusion later that afternoon. Through all of this Max did not scream, or cry, or even get scared. He had a bloody nose later that day and when the nurse came in to help him....he pointed his tiny little finger at her and simply said "YOU gave me too much blood today". It was hysterical. He has got the brightest sense of humor in the darkest of places. It's just beautiful and amazing to me. Something tells me that I will be taking notes and learning life lessons from Max a little bit everyday. At this point Max has started 4 of the 5 chemo drugs for the induction phase of therapy. (Day 1-29) Our day one was on Saturday January 3rd. Max will have his PEG injection on wednesday (day5) and will undergo another bone marrow aspiration and chemo spine injection on sunday (day 8). We have been told that his treatment will last 3 1/2 years. I don't really know what to say. It is heart crushing to watch your child live through something like this. You never dream as a parent that you will one day explain cancer or its unruly side effects....so there is really no preparation for something like this. Everything is just moving so fast and I feel like I could just use a couple of minutes with the pause button to wrap my mind around this. All of the calls and emails have been just wonderful. What a blessing to have such amazing family and friends. These are the times that call for that kind of love and I feel so grateful.
We have had a couple good days and a couple of bad days and I know that this up and down motion will be perpetual. Today I am sad. My heart hurts. And Max hurts. And nothing but time will fix what has been broken. I'm slowly learning to lay it down and place Max into much bigger and safer hands. I will update soon. This first entry is *kind of* an incoherent mess. Finding time and healthy emotional space to document has been difficult. Thanks for the prayers....please keep them coming.